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Question: What American League team won a World Series despite a 29-52 regular-season road record?

Last Question: What show featuring the exploits of everyday folks was hosted by luminaries like Byron Allen, Mark Russell and Fred Willard?

Answer: Real People

Before all the reality show crap that is out there now, we had Real People. Real People had the format of a comedy talk show taped in front of a large studio audience. Each segment featured a news report consisting of visits to people with unique occupations or hobbies, occasionally bringing some of them in-studio to interact with the audience.
Regular hosts included John Barbour, Sarah Purcell, Byron Allen, Skip Stephenson, Bill Rafferty, Mark Russell, Peter Billingsley, and Fred Willard. The series that aired from 1979 to 1984.

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“Everlasting Love” by Rex Smith and Rachel Sweet

“Everlasting Love” was originally recorded by Robert Knight in 1967, and a more recent version was done by Gloria Estefan in 1995.

The Rachel Sweet version peaked at #32 on August 22, 1981. Sweet was paired with Rex Smith who had reached #10 in 1979 with “You Take My Breath Away”. Their duet on “Everlasting Love” was featured on both Sweet’s And Then He Kissed Me album and the album Everlasting Love by Smith. This would provide Sweet with her only Top 40 showing and Smith with a second and final one.

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Question: What show featuring the exploits of everyday folks was hosted by luminaries like Byron Allen, Mark Russell and Fred Willard?

Last Question: What two Matt Dillon films did Francis Ford Coppola shoot back-to-back in Tulsa?

Answer: The Outsiders and Rumble Fish

Francis Ford Coppola had not intended to make a film about teen angst until middle-school students from Lone Star Elementary School in Fresno, California, great fans of The Godfather, wrote to him about adapting The Outsiders. When Coppola read the book, he was moved not only to adapt and direct “The Outsiders”, but to follow it the next year by adapting another S.E. Hinton novel, Rumble Fish. The latter film’s cast included Matt Dillon, Diane Lane, and Glenn Withrow from “The Outsiders”.

The film was shot on location in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Coppola filmed The Outsiders and Rumble Fish back-to-back in 1982.

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“Rock and Roll Dreams Come Through” by Jim Steinman

Jim Steinman is best known for writing and producing Meat Loaf’s Bat Out of Hell albums, as well as Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart”, Air Supply’s “Making Love out of Nothing at All” and Celine Dion’s “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now”.

Early in the production of a follow-up album to Bat out of Hell, Meat Loaf developed vocal problems and was unable to continue on the project. Steinman proceeded with the album, released as Bad for Good in 1981. Most songs from this album were sung by Steinman himself. He ended up scoring a hit with “Rock and Roll Dreams Come Through”, which peaked at #32 on August 15, 1981. A rock vocalist named Rory Dodd actually sang the song. But, he was uncredited for this song, and Steinman got the credit. This was the closest hit that Steinman was credited for as a singer. He has gone on to other producing and writing successes, especially with Meatloaf’s Bat Out of Hell II: Back Into Hell in 1993. Meat Loaf sang “Rock and Roll Dreams Come Through” on that album.

Last Question: What mints were hyped in ads that boasted: “Fresh breath speaks for itself”?

Answer: Certs

Certs have been a fixture at grocery and convenience store registers since 1956.

Here is an old commercial where people would argue whether Certs was a breath mint or a candy mint. Then the announcer would resolve the issue by proclaiming that Certs is both – it is “Two, two, two mints in one!”.

They used this advertising strategy for years. Then they got lampooned on Saturday Night Live in this classic skit:

Maybe it forced them into this “Fresh breath speaks for itself” campaign:

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Question: What mints were hyped in ads that boasted: “Fresh breath speaks for itself”?

Last Question: What 1987 Billy Crystal movie earned an Oscar nomination for gruff Anne Ramsey, who’d lost parts of her tongue and jaw to throat cancer?

Answer: Throw Momma from the Train

Anne Ramsey was most famous for her roles as Mama Fratelli in The Goonies and as Mrs. Lift, Danny DeVito’s mother, in Throw Momma from the Train.

In 1988, she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress and the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture for her role in Throw Momma from the Train.

Ramsey’s somewhat slurred speech, a trademark of her later performances, was caused in part from having had some of her tongue and her jaw removed during surgery for esophageal cancer in 1984. In 1988, Ramsey’s cancer returned. She died in August at the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, California.